HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS BASKETBALL: TCA finds intensity in romp

HAMILTON - The toughest job Khaliq Lewis-El has had this season was getting his Trenton Catholic Academy girls to play with the same level of intensity he coaches with.

Until a week ago the intensity level for the coach and his basketball players wasn’t on the same page.

It is now, and with five straight wins the Lady Mikes are determined to get back to another Mercer County Tournament title game.

TCA won by over 45 points for the second straight game in this year’s MCT when it blew out a determined, but outmanned Pennington squad, 69-24, at the Iron Palace to roll into Wednesday’s semifinal showdown at 6 p.m. at Mercer County Community College against No. 1 seed Hopewell Valley.

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HoVal beat Trenton, 44-26, in its quarterfinal to get to 21-2 in its third straight 20-win season.

TCA, which three weeks ago had lost four of five, is now 16-6 and playing the way Lewis-El expected them to play all season.

Against a Pennington team playing its third high-pressure tournament game in four days, the Lady Mikes got double-figure scoring from Isis Young (14), Tyler Raysor (13) and Tiana Garner (11), shot 29-for-61 and forced 31 turnovers. That’s after bolting to a 22-3 first quarter lead when it shot 9-for-20 while Pennington missed 11 of its first 12 shots.

“We’ve gotten over all the humps we had earlier in the season and now it’s starting to come together for us,” said Garner, whose 11 points was a career-high as a Lady Mike. “It started about three games ago when we beat Washington Township after losing to Rancocs Valley and Willingboro.

“We just want to keep playing TCA basketball now, and with plenty of intensity. It doesn’t matter who we play next,” said Garner,

The Mikes haven’t faced HoVal since the semifinal of the 2011 MCT. Now they will find a much more experinced Bulldog team with three starters who were sophomore reserves that year. It will be a showdown between two of the top six ranked teams in The Trentonian Area Top 20.

“Right now it’s just about getting victories because it’s playoff time,” said Lewis-El. “Now it’s a matter of getting them to keep their intensity up. Even matching mine.”

That sounds hard to do because even with a 206-47 career record and four state titles in nine seasons Lewis-El is non-stop in a game, seldom sitting and always yelling instructions. It’s hard to get his players to be as intense.

“Actually I’ve had some teams that were more intense than I was and you saw what they did,” he said about the last three Lady Mike teams to win Non-Public B state championships.

They may not retain their MCT this week, but they’ll give it a run as they did against the 11-7 Red Raiders, who were trying to bounce back after losing 42-40 in overtime at 20-win Newark Academy in the Prep B state semifinal Sunday.

It never got a chance to hang with TCA as Garner started her best day with half of the first 14 points while Young and Erin Garner hit four apiece in the quick getaway. Sinking 17 of its first 32 shots TCA was able to return senior point guard Marissa Senatus to the court briefly after she had missed five games with a medical issue.

Brittany Richards finished with 12 to lead Pennington, sinking two fourth period 3-pointers.